THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

In an article entitled, “The basic context and structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Right,” Kenneth Westphal presents Hegel as “a reform minded liberal who based his
political philosophy on the analysis and fulfillment of individual freedom.” 292 He argues
that Hegel’s political philosophy presents the necessary conditions for the possibility of
individual freedom. In order to defuse worries about the apparently anti-liberal
tendencies of Sittlichkeit, Westphal employs the language of transcendental arguments to
explain the relationship between this section and the earlier, more explicitly liberal
discussions in the Philosophy of Right. Speaking of Hegel, he says:
His justification of ethical life [i.e. Sittlichkeit] is that the conditions for the
possibility of abstract right and morality are not given within the accounts of
abstract right or of morality. The conditions for their possibility – their grounds –
are provided only by ethical life. 293
Sittlichkeit supports and grounds the basic rights and freedoms discussed in “Abstract
Right” and “Morality.” It does not challenge or negate them. Thus, on Westphal’s view,
the Philosophy of Right does not reject the core commitments of liberalism, but rather it
augments or completes them.
In numerous articles, Robert Pippin presents a similar account of the dialectical
development and general political orientation of the Philosophy of Right. In one article,
entitled “Hegel on the Rationality and Priority of Ethical Life,” Pippin provides assurance
against worries about “what might appear to be a kind of anti-individualism” in Hegel’s
commitment to ethical life. 294 In response to such worries, Pippin emphasizes Hegel’s
commitment to basic human rights (“Abstract Right”) and the centrality of an agent’s
292 In The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick C. Beiser. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press. 1993. P. 234.
293 Cambridge Companion to Hegel, p. 255.
294 In Neue Hefte für Philosophie, 1995, 35. P. 96
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